Keep Calm and Use Neutrals

The secret to the feeling of home is to create a space that represents who you are-- your personality, your dreams, and your inspirations. Expressing the complexity of a person through a single object is at best, a challenge, and understanding the interdisciplinary art of interior design provides so many ways to accomplish this task.

There are few more common, daunting tasks: starting with a vacant white box and trying to make it feel like home.

One of the greatest challenges of personal interior design is trying to cram every aspect of who you are into a dish, a paint swatch, an Ikea laptop cart. The only progress this leads to is to becoming overwhelmed and deciding that the task is impossible, your ambition dwindles, and you find yourself skipping the painter's tape, buying every blue lamp at Target, and an "Italian villa" tapestry.


The trick to sanity in developing an interior design is developing a base palette of colors to work from. As per the Sherwin Williams color forecast for 2013, we recommend starting with some expensive looking neutrals, many of which are featured in this collection of colors called "Honed Vitality". After you've decided two-three baseline colors, select one-two vibrant colors to feature throughout the space. These will be used in accent pieces. Take color theory interpretations with a grain of salt, but here's a pretty great resource for learning about color in interiors: http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

That's it! You've got your color scheme nailed down.

Next, we'll discuss how to select furniture and objects to fill your space.

Black and White Pumpkins

We are in love with these clean, stylish, and unique black and white pumpkins. As we understand it, the idea came from Martha Stewart (and it's recommended to use her white craft glaze for the pumpkins) and articulated by Oopsy Daisy Blog. Please be sure to check out her awesome, easy to follow, and practical tutorial here: http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2011/09/black-and-white-pumpkins-2-tutorials.html

There are many iterations we found around the expansive and inspiring internet of these pumpkins and want to encourage anyone with a love of design to apply this sort of out-of-the-box thinking to all aspects of decor.

We feel that the true value of pinning on Pinterest and Tumblr-ing all day isn't in keeping track of things you'd like to replicate, but in keeping track of different way that we all can customize any object in our home. Design implements are the best way to declare possessions yours-- anyone can own an object, but no one else can own the objects you've made your own.

2012 Fall Parade of Homes

WaterWalk condo #502 won Pick of the Parade, Effective Design, Kitchen Design, Master Suite Design, Decorating/ Merchandising/Color, and also won a Unique Feature award for the fireplace wall in the dining room.

Click here for images!

Sweater Knit Pillow Covers DIY

West Elm has these awesome Sweater Knit Pillow Covers. They retail for $39 (plus shipping & handling), but I bet you have sweaters laying around that you don’t wear anymore, don’t you? Following a few easy steps, you can have your own version of these neat, trendy pillows for a fraction of the cost!

1. Pick up pillow forms from your local craft store OR you can re-cover an existing pillow. You can also stuff them with Poly-Fil if the knit of the sweater is tight enough.

2. Turn the sweater inside out and sew the shape. Sewing before cutting will prevent the edges from fraying too much.You could also hand stitch the cover using a contrasting color yarn to add an interesting touch and not reversing the form. Just cut around the edge and let the yarn fray. Fringe!

3. Insert pillow form or stuffing and sew the end shut. Voila! Instant pillow! You could also add fun buttons or patches for a neat accent.

French Door Transformation With Window Film

Do you have a pair of interior french doors that are screaming out for an update, and you don't know what to do with them? Here is a simple way to update your french doors that you can do as a weekend project (or you could add to your "Honey-Do List"!)

Before - This french door had the ruched fabric attached to small rods on the back of the doors for privacy. While it provided privacy, it was also bulky and a dust collector.

 Then came the idea of window film! It is readily available at your local Lowes or Home Depot in 24" x 36" rolls for around $20 per roll.

Voila! Two panes complete! At this point I was pretty pumped!

It is fairly easy to install.
1. Clean the windows!
2. Measure your window pane.
3. The film comes on a paper backing. This makes it easy to draw out the shape of the film needing to be cut.
4. Using a straight edge and xacto blade, carefully cut along your marked lines.
5. Do not remove paper backing yet! Dry fit into the pane. This way you will know how much to trim off the sides. Trim to fit leaving about a 1/16 of an inch around all sides.
6. Spray a mixture of water and liquid dish soap on the window pane.
7. Remove the paper backing
8. Then place film on the wet window surface.
9. Spray on the top of the film and use supplied squeegee to get out the excess water and air bubbles.

 Here is a side by side comparison. It really works!

Completed project! 40 total window panes took 7 rolls of film (due to pattern) But the final result looks really nice!

Breakfast Nooks!

We love bright and clean design. Let light colors and natural sunlight permeate any space to create a revitalizing retreat space in any room of the house. Wouldn't it be wonderful to cuddle into a one of these pillowed corners in this inset bench with a bowl of cereal and a book? The construction needed for this is minimal-- even a 3 board pi-shaped bench with a recovered baby-bed mattress in front of a large window would do the trick. A chaise would also be a luxurious way to recline in the morning, a gentle transition from sleeping to being upright for the rest of the day.

Don't have a large window to set a bench in? Create a makeshift (and transformable) space with an old church pew (we've found more than a couple on Craigslist), a table (try a fun, unique triangle-shape to make use of a corner in a small space, or to just be economical) and a couple of chairs. We encourage cutting fresh flowers for the vase on the small table, at least for the first few days after you set this temporary space up, to keep it feeling relaxing, sweet, and magical.

Creating a distressed look on canvas.

Using a mixture of baking soda and paint created this distressed look on the canvas. Sanding down the entire canvas after the paint has dried creates a matte "chalk" finish.

To create the water stains - use water! It reacts with the baking soda and leaves the streaks on the canvas.